Forum Thread

aesthetocyst

Forum post.

madsalad

Amazing. I didn't even get to hand in my data but I'm on Sim 39 with lvl 414 JG/HB/LThor. Brutal. 7 nodes from the end. My highest character is 360 oml. After that it's 270s. I hit the wall by the end of Sub 1 and pushed through that wall in Sub 2 (which might have been the hardest with the proliferation of Iron Man and Wolverine on the other team on a lot of nodes).

AXP_isme

Excellent analysis, really very very good. If you're looking for a job I'd be happy to hire you...

On an MPQ note I fit firmly into the player 2 node and this model fits perfectly what I observe. Again, your description of my situation is pretty much spot on: I can complete it, the rewards are worth it but farming nodes with levels this high isn't really worth it for the vast majority of the rewards. I think I'll stop doing my own thinking and outsource it to you.

Leadggb

This is a great post. I especially agree with VII. Rewards need to scale up as the difficulty of opponents scale up.

HOWEVER

aesthetocyst wrote:

VIII. TL;DR

This event needs to be tiered. BADLY. All events in MPQ do, but Gauntlet is the penultimate example. New players can't finish it. Advanced players can (when the scaling is under control), but it's not worth their time. The disparity in player strengths has always been there, and it just keeps growing.


.

Penultimate does not mean what you think it means.

Stax the Foyer

Leadggb wrote:

This is a great post. I especially agree with VII. Rewards need to scale up as the difficulty of opponents scale up.

HOWEVER

aesthetocyst wrote:

VIII. TL;DR

This event needs to be tiered. BADLY. All events in MPQ do, but Gauntlet is the penultimate example. New players can't finish it. Advanced players can (when the scaling is under control), but it's not worth their time. The disparity in player strengths has always been there, and it just keeps growing.


.

Penultimate does not mean what you think it means.

Hey now, how can we be sure what he thinks it means? Maybe this thread is a teaser for his next thread.



EDIT: I type too slow.

Felonius

Excellent analysis. Thank you. I think I'm somewhere between Player 3 and 4. My 3* are all champed (I have all 40), and while I have a dozen or so well-covered 4*, few are at L200 with one at L254. I've got no champed 4*. I've one good L337 OML, but the rest of my 5* are useless.

Interesting that my OML was used against me. I really felt it on nodes with a Wolverine (where I couldn't use him).

I agree with you though that the rewards for the effort are terribly substandard. I'd really prefer a standard PvE Event. I really need the ISO (don't we all).

Thank you Aesthetocyst.

P.S. Did you mean to say that the Gauntlet was the number one example of an event that needs to be tiered? You should say it's the Ultimate example. Penultimate means second-to-last.

Tenaciousdecaf

Felonius wrote:

Excellent analysis. Thank you. I think I'm somewhere between Player 3 and 4. My 3* are all champed (I have all 40), and while I have a dozen or so well-covered 4*, few are at L200 with one at L254. I've got no champed 4*. I've one good L337 OML, but the rest of my 5* are useless.

Interesting that my OML was used against me. I really felt it on nodes with a Wolverine (where I couldn't use him).

I agree with you though that the rewards for the effort are terribly substandard. I'd really prefer a standard PvE Event. I really need the ISO (don't we all).

Thank you Aesthetocyst.

P.S. Did you mean to say that the Gauntlet was the number one example of an event that needs to be tiered? You should say it's the Ultimate example. Penultimate means second-to-last.

Aes qualified his assessment in a follow-up post and I whole heartedly agree with him : PVP is the ultimate example.

Miztiq

Thanks for the analysis. I just wanted to question this bit:

aesthetocyst wrote:

The devs tried to fix a few things leading up to this run of Gauntlet.

For the player's benefit, they incorporated (lack of) covers into scaling. By now, Player 1 and 2 both have half-baked 5*s that are well above, but nowhere near as powerful as, their highest finished characters. If this scaling tweak wasn't in place, Player 1 would be seeing Player 2's scaling, and Player 2 would be nearer Player 3's scaling. Ouch.

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Has this actually been implemented in PVE yet? Last I knew we had those few PVE tests, and the new scaling was incorporated into PVP, but I was under the impression that we were still on the old scaling system in PVE while they tweak the proposed changes. Have I missed something?

adamdivine

Yes, they have done something because I couldn't keep a 5 a few weeks ago, and then all of a sudden I could. I'm a 3* player and nothing significantly changed in my roster or levels. I always gave the 5's a chance and it made the game unbearable, now it's fine. Just wish I could get back those 3 OML covers I sold!!

TheOncomingStorm

TL;DR.

The developers have done a lot right in this game. Their weakness seems to be they think we're at an earlier stage of the game. The scaling adjustments tests have seemed it of whack and something we saw at the game's infancy. I'm not sure what it means that we are seeing it at this point.

Same thing with rewards. Older players (to be blunt) don't feel rewarded on par of the challenges or time or effort. New players seem to have little hope of collecting or leveling their rosters in any meaningful way. It's daunting to look at how many characters the game has in comparison to the trickle of covers and iso.

UncleSmed

aesthetocyst wrote:

Yeah, the update is in. Thanks! Scaling structure is the same .... ramp up to a break and steady from there, and dialed down across the board. Levels (on the main 'slope') dropped about 50. I hear for 5* players it was a drop of 100 levels.

This gets the event back to playability for most .... improves the risk-reward ratio. Hey, maybe my noob account has a chance now!

PS — All the bits about rewards and tiering still stand

PPS — And the part about, "Oops, your highest character is locked out but your scaled based on them anyway" ... yeah, still a problem. Will take more sophisticated functions, more than a data push, to fix that ... !

Player type 2.. got two rogue 5*'s with 2 mixed covers apiece and my scaling dropped by 100 levels.

Very much agree with the tiering, would even love to see them implement a method whereby you determined your own scaling by selecting your available characters from your roster a la heroics.

Lock your other toons out, and play through with your chosen group with scaling set by the available group.

If they tiered reward structures, it might be implementable.

The Bob The

Great visualization, aes. Thanks for always doing the work to show us what changes in this game actually look like. Let me buy you an Internet beer.

tizian2015

Amazing work!

I think you name the main problem: every player plays the same events, so only difficulty is "content" and the joke is, regardless which difficulty you play, you play for the same rewards. Its like fighting a scaling hogger in WoW regardless which level you are, because you need his loot, which is not scaling. DDQ is the only event, which reflects progression for a players roster. its getting really easier the better you are (except the 4* DDQ, which is a big wall for a 3* transitioner, because you need a viable essential, not only the essential). Tiered events are needed, i wanna have the choice to cruise through for small rewards or fight for the better ones with more difficulty or the best ones for hard mode.

GuntherBlobel

Amazing work! Great visualization. I'm really impressed, and more importantly, convinced.

As you suggested, the Devs should tier the Guantlet. All they need is to do is: 1) Turn off Roater-based scaling. 2) Tier the opponents to match the tier of the reward. 3) Create a 5* tier sub. And 4) allow players to join any sub they want to at any time.

Unfortunately, the other PvE campaigns won't be so easily reworked.

Your work is so compelling that you absolutely convinced me to stop leveling my 4*/5* characters until the Devs completely overhaul the way PvE works. My decision isn't about competing better, instead I worry that I'll simply stop enjoying the game with higher level characters.